After a short phone call—lots of “I’ll explain in five minutes when I’m home”—she hands me back my phone and lowers her head into her hands.

“What are you going to tell them?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out. Maybe I can tell them I need some sleep before we talk.”

“Are you okay?”

“No,” she says through her fingers. “John came back. I got super emotional and weird with him because I was feeling so crappy about everything before he just magically showed up, and then the FBI tackled me. I don’t know where John is now, and I am officially pegged as a person who is somehow connected to all this. I’ve been sitting in an interrogation room for the last three hours.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“Nothing,” she says. “It was that Walker agent and a few other people. Noto. And some guy named Purdy.”

I note the name—the agent GUARD talked to on the phone. Is he the one in charge of everything going on in town?

Sarah continues.

“They wanted to know why John came to see me, and I told them it was because we made out a few times before he went crazy and he probably thought that I’d do it again if he showed up and threw pebbles at my window like we were in some kind of rom-com. I just pretended to be dumb.”

“And they believed that?”

“No, I don’t think so. But they let me go, at least. They have John. I think that’s all they really cared about. They just told me to make sure I didn’t leave town or there’d be trouble.” She shakes her head. “I’m on a freaking no fly list they said, as if I’d try to skip the country or something.”

“Shit.”

“I know.” Sarah pulls the edge of her gray sweater over her fingertips. “I feel so stupid. This is my fault.”

“No, it’s mine. My dad saw the text you sent. I shouldn’t have let that happen.”

She looks surprised about this for a second—even happy that what happened last night might not have been her fault. Then her face falls.

“They were probably watching me anyway. I should have told him, but instead I just ran outside. I was so happy to see him.”

“You don’t know that they had eyes on you.”

“I don’t know what they’ve done with him,” she says. Her voice is about to crack. “John . . .”

“I think he’s in Dumont. There’s some kind of FBI facility near the state border.”

“What?!” she practically shouts, jumping in her seat and straining against the seat belt. “We have to go. I have to talk to him. I have to explain to him that I didn’t—”